Читать книгу Before Winter - Nancy Wallace K. - Страница 10

Devin wakened to the sound of sobbing. He rubbed blurry eyes with one hand to see Lavender scouring the ledge above them, her muddy hands feverishly patting the rock. Some of the wooden heads cradled in the remnants of her skirt had fallen to lie in the dirt at her feet. Devin prevented two of them from falling with the toe of his boot as they rolled precariously close to the edge of the ravine.

“He’s gone! He’s gone!” Lavender sobbed. “We can’t go on without him to protect us!”

“The Captain of the Guard?” Devin asked resignedly.

Lavender turned to fix him with a suspicious eye. “How did you know?”

Devin sat up. “I didn’t actually know for sure. But I dreamed about him last night. He kept shouting, ‘Danger! Danger!’ and then he rolled off the ledge and down the ravine. I watched him float down the stream toward Calais.”

Lavender rose to her diminutive size, her hands on her hips. “You didn’t even try to stop him? To save him?”

“I was asleep!” Devin protested. “I saw this in a dream. Have you asked Marcus if he heard anything?”

Marcus shook his head. “I certainly didn’t hear him roll down into the stream, Lavender.” He gestured at the wooden heads scattered around her feet. “Are you certain he isn’t there?”

She flopped onto the dirt, sorting balls into groups around her, murmuring each name lovingly to herself. Devin watched her, wondering how much of reality she had any true hold on. She looked so pathetic, tears drying in dirty streaks down her cheeks, her fingers shaking as she tallied up the only remnants of her family and friends that she had left.

“What have we done to our people,” Devin whispered to Marcus, “that they have been left so fragile and pitiful? Angelique’s story shocked me when I realized how much she had to bear and then there was Elsbeth, Dariel Moreau’s wife. She went to the market and came home to find her husband tortured and murdered on the floor of Tirolien’s Bardic Hall. Who knows what unhinged Lavender’s mind or how many more there are like her? How many children have watched their parents die and have been left orphaned to …”

“Just stop!” Marcus demanded. “Why are you so maudlin this morning? It won’t help anything to dwell on this. You’ll end up spouting gibberish yourself, if you haven’t already.”

“He’s not here,” Lavender wailed suddenly. She glared at Devin. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t help him! He would still be here if you had caught him when he fell.”

Devin sighed in exasperation. “Well obviously, I didn’t. I wasn’t even awake, Lavender. I thought I dreamt the entire thing.”

“He took the time to warn you!” she pointed out with an accusing finger. “And it cost him his life.”

Devin resisted the urge to point out that a wooden ball was not alive. “He may have warned me,” he said quietly. “But he didn’t tell me what he was warning me about.”

“We can’t stay here,” Lavender stated, gathering the wooden heads in her tattered skirt. “We need to move on, now. Surely you can understand that!”

“Perhaps he was warning us about the deserted town down the mossy steps,” Devin said. “There is more than one place here where we may encounter danger.”

“Well, I’m leaving,” Lavender said with a huff. “I don’t need to be told twice that my life is in danger. If the Captain of the Guard gave his life to save me, I would be foolish to disregard his advice and so would you!”

Marcus dropped his head in his hands. “God! This is insane!”

“Call it what you will,” Lavender replied sulkily. “But remember that I warned you.”

Marcus clapped a hand on Devin’s shoulder. “Let’s go! There’s no use arguing with her and call me a bleeding-heart moron, but I won’t let her go on alone.”

Devin smiled and stood up, one hand on the rocks behind him, hoping to hide his persistent dizziness from Marcus. His bodyguard didn’t need another thing to worry about.

They slithered down the slope to the stream bed. Marcus persuaded Lavender to let him carry the wooden heads in the food sack after two escaped her skirt on the way down the incline. The smell of earth and pine reminded Devin sharply of his bodyguard’s gun pointing at him in another part of Tirolien but he pushed the memory away and concentrated instead on Marcus’ broad back ahead of him. Lavender led them deeper into the woods, where the ferns grew so large they towered over her. They followed the stream as it meandered to the northeast. The air was chilly this morning and wood smoke wafted through the trees.

Marcus put a hand out in front of Devin. “That smoke is from a cooking fire. Those soldiers may have stopped for the night. Walk quietly and be ready to hide should we come across them.”

“The smoke is from Martigues,” Lavender volunteered. “It is off the road, a mile or so to the north. There are only a handful of houses there. Hunters and trappers, mostly. They sell their meat and furs in Calais until the winter snows make the roads impassable. They are rough men. I stay away from Martigues.”

Devin glanced at Marcus and saw a shadow of worry cross his face before they started off again. The smell of wood smoke faded as they moved farther away from the road. Devin didn’t believe he had ever traveled so far into the wilderness before. The pines here were as tall as cathedral spires and even in August there were telltale glimpses of autumn color among the maples and aspens. In a heartbeat autumn would be over and winter would be upon them. They had to reach Coreé before roads were impassable and the icy storms on the Dantzig had effectively halted travel for the season. He hoped that Lavender’s promise of a way into the tunnels was a legitimate one and not a figment of her irrational mind.

By late afternoon, they reached the deepest part of the ravine. On either side crumbled stone foundations rose up, still attached to the cliff walls. In the center, the stream threaded its way through part of a broken wall in a series of small waterfalls. The streambed below lay scattered with huge stones, as though giants had tossed them in some mythical battle.

Marcus turned to look behind them. “That valley behind us must have been carved out by the lake and these stones are what remain of a dam. There must have been a very powerful storm that overfilled it and then burst through and flooded the land below.”

“The dam was burst intentionally,” Lavender said. “My father told me. He said the people of the town refused to pay their taxes and the government sent soldiers who sabotaged the dam. They drowned every man, woman and child in the village.”

“My God,” Devin muttered. “When was this?”

Lavender shrugged. “I don’t know. The area has been deserted for many, many years. No one else wanted to rebuild in such a vulnerable spot. Legend says that this was the oldest town in Llisé.”

“Really?” Devin asked, yearning to pull Tirolien’s Chronicle from his jacket and read it but he dared not risk letting Lavender know that he had it.

“It’s said to be haunted,” Lavender continued darkly. “But I’m not afraid of a few ghosts.” She turned to look at Devin, her eyes glinting. “Are you?”

Devin thought she looked like a wraith herself as she wound through the heavy undergrowth, always keeping the stream to her right. He lost his footing more than once on the rocky edges of the streambed, his vision still taunting him with blurred images of where he needed to put his foot next. One misstep filled his left boot with icy water and he had to stop, hopping on one foot to empty it.

They were so deep in the ravine that the sun had already effectively set for them when they reached the site of the ruined village. Their footing, which had been unsure before, now became precarious. The deep shadows did lend a ghostly quality to the scene before them and mist rose from the water as a chill drifted down the ravine behind them. Tumbled stone lay everywhere; a few buildings were marked by what remained of their foundations. Although, on the left side of the stream what must have been a church nestled into the hillside. Its nave had been ripped apart by the flood waters but its ragged steeple remained. There was something incredibly forlorn about it and Devin found his eyes drawn to it again and again. Moss and ivy softened the harsh lines of the ruins but there was a tremendous sensation of loss that permeated the scene.

“That’s it,” Marcus said as he called a halt to further exploration for the night. “We’ll have no broken ankles or legs to complicate matters.” He slung the sack of wooden heads down with a smack which made Lavender jump and murmur something uncomplimentary under her breath. “There’s an L-shaped wall over there which will offer some protection for the night.”

Devin was grateful to stop. His headache had returned by mid-afternoon and he was tired of straining his eyes to see what lay ahead of them. He slid down the wall that Marcus indicated and rested his shoulders against the stone.

“If you would gather some sticks, Lavender,” Marcus said, “I think we could chance having a fire.”

Lavender gave Marcus’ sack a loving pat and hobbled off to collect wood. Devin glanced at Marcus. “She promised us a way into the tunnels. It seems the church is the only possibility.”

“I agree,” Marcus responded, watching her slow progress at gathering kindling.

“But where are the ‘mossy steps’?” Devin asked.

Marcus pointed up the hill. “Maybe they come down toward the church from the other side, which is odd because she claimed the entrance was ‘down the mossy steps.’”

“She must have discovered them from above then,” Devin speculated.

“Perhaps,” Marcus said.

“You don’t trust her?”

Marcus pursed his lips. “I don’t trust anyone but the Chancellor and you, Devin.”

“Which Chancellor?” Devin asked.

Marcus stopped, a wounded expression on his face. “Do you really need to ask?”

“Yes,” Devin replied. “I do. Because I am determined to do everything I can to keep my father in power. I just want to make certain that you feel the same way, too.”

“You have my word,” Marcus replied, holding out his hand.

Devin avoided his eyes because there was still a part of him that didn’t trust Marcus. He wondered if the mistrust would ever be gone, but they seemed to be bound whether he wanted it so or not. He didn’t shake Marcus’ hand and Marcus was quick to withdraw it when it wasn’t accepted.